Category Archives: Reviews

I like to read, watch films and I like to listen to music too when the mood take me. In these posts I will share with you what I have been listening to, watching and reading lately. Enjoy and by all means feel free to tell me your own opinions and my lack of good taste!

Dredd among the Peach Trees

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See how little we at Odeon care…not even a single poster to take a picture of!

On Sunday I went to Kilmarnock to see Dredd 3D.  Unlike many others out there I am a fan of the original 1995 Judge Dredd movie which adapted the famous law man from the pages of seminal British comic 2000AD to the big screen. So I was keen to see how the new movie starring Karl Urban as old stony face matched up to it and also to expectations.  Now that I have seen it…how did it match up…was it still…THE LAW!

I had mixed expectations of the new movie.  I had seen two different trailers and a couple of feature clips as well.  These did not make me think Mega City One more Korea and last years movie The Raid Redemption about a team of police who try to clear an entire tower block of criminals one room at a time.  While I enjoyed The Raid (I have not reviewed it due to time constraints, if anyone wants me to please comment) it was thin on plot but super heavy on action.  Since the parts of Dredd I had seen made me think the same I was not sure I would enjoy it.

Well as it turned out I did not really enjoy the movie though the two people I was with did greatly enjoy it.  Why?  I think due to me being very switched on to the comics and the sheer depth of Mega City lore which could have been mined for the movie.  Basically the city was missing from the movie.  Sure you saw Johannesburg with some CGI generated skyscrapers (blocks) and some Judges but nothing of the Mega City I know.  No robots, no Fatties, no Aliens, No Judge Death, no H-Wagons floating on the wind and so on.  This was very much grim and gritty and near future bound.   I felt that Karl Urban nailed the character of Judge Dredd and his facial expressions were spot on.   I was not overly keen on Olivia Thirlby as Judge Anderson but that was more due to her not being a tall blond bombshell who cracks minds with her telepathy, her acting was really good and she humanised the film more than any other character.  That was basically it for characters aside from Lena Headly as Ma-Ma.  Ma-Ma was a villain more filled with promise than results who threatened and acted up without ever really feeling like she was a challenge to Dredd and went out without a whimper.

The film well deserved its 18 certificate as it was very violent with super slow motion gun, explosion and knife wounds on full display.  There was nothing in it that I found shocking though as some reviews have claimed and compared to scenes in most American horror films it did not top or rival them.  Dredd delivered some excellent deadpan one liners that were the highlight of the film for me.  I know it was made a lower budget and for that it is really well executed my hat is off to the director for this.

In conclusion then I would say that 2000AD has now shaken off the curse of the 1995 film but in doing so has lost the core identity of the Mega City.  Aside from the helmets this could have been any other near future action film set in a depressing drab and grey urban hell hole.  Robust, worth watching but without the sparkle that will make it remembered.

GBS

Pax Omega by Al Ewing

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The cover of this book is a nightmare to take pictures of. Even Amazon had trouble! This is the best I could do.

This last week I managed to finish a book I had bought a while back.  It failed to grab me from the off but by the time I reached the middle I kept trying to find spare moments to read on.  The book is Pax Omega by Al Ewing.

I knew of Al Ewing from his work in the fantastic British Comic 2000AD where he has written many scripts including Zombo.  After this I bought his novel El Sombra on the back of the comic and also other Pax Brittanica novels set in that universe.  I really enjoyed El Sombra with its pulp trashy literature take on the motif of the western and also steampunk.  So with that in mind when I saw Pax Omega on the shelf of my local bookshop I decided to buy it.  I will admit the blurb left me a little confused.  Was this a novel or a collection of short stories?  The answer is a clever..both!

Doc Thunder’s last stand against a deadly foe whose true identity will shock you to your core! El Sombra’s final battle against the forces of the Ultimate Reich! The Locomotive Man in a showdown with cosmic science on the prairies of the Old West! Jackson Steele defends the 25th Century against the massed armies of the Space Satan! A duel of minds in the mystery palaces of One Million AD! Blazing steam-pulp sci-fi the way you crave it! From the Big Bang to the End Of Time – eleven tales from Pax Britannia’s past, present and distant future combine into one starspanning saga set to shake the universe to its foundations or destroy it! (from the book blurb)

Pax Omega is a series of stories that are linked together in ways that become clearer as the book progresses.  From the ancient past to the vastly distant future there are conflicts fused with vision and humour.  As I said it took me a while to get into the book and that turned out to be a shame because when the tale reached the point of bringing in El Sombra and Doc Thunder it was moving at a fine pace.  Reminding me of Flash Gordon of Dick Tracey as well as many other pulp heroes the book also made good use of ‘soundbites’ from other famous science fiction tales such as the ‘Robot Detective Decker’ and so on.  It also projected in places a flash into our own world with its troubles such as the Summer 2011 London Riots.   The language was florid and varied and I enjoyed that a lot.  It was bigger than life in places.  In fact there are so many settings in this book that you don’t know what is coming next at all!  This is pulp at its best..square jawed fighting and big speech making heroes and villains.

I recommend this book but I do also think that if you like the idea of Pax Brittanica you should seek out Al’s other books (El Sombra and The Gods of Manhattan).  I have not read Gods of Manhattan and it showed, I did not know who Doc Thunder was!

Mad..Inspired..Great Pulp Fun!

GBS

A Request to Review ‘Battlegames Magazine’

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BattleGround Magazines No 28-30

I was asked by John Howe-Marshall at Media Shed, the advertising bookers for Miniature Wargames Magazine and my contact for our own adverts in that publication if I had heard of Battle Games magazine.  I said I had but I had not seen it in a long time.  John told me it was as growing entity and that I should consider it for advertising but since it was not on the news stand and was subscription only he would send me a couple of copies to have a look at.  To thank him for this I told him I would do a review of those issues and share my thoughts with all you readers.

The issues arrived today!  So I hope to get an overview review of the three of them done this week.

GBS

We Can Remake it for You Wholesale – Total Recall 2012

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Is it Good or is it Me?

Last night I went to the cinema.  Myself, my good lady and Eve Hallow.  Now I know what regular readers of this blog are wondering ‘he said he did not like the new Total Recall, so why did he go and see it?’.  Two reasons, firstly I was being paid for (which greases the wheels) and secondly I decided to be fair and after seeing extended trailers from the movie I took the chance.  Have a read of my previous posting about Total Recall 2012 for my opinions there.  But anyhoo how was the film?

Well it was actually pretty good.  Leaving aside the plot and characters the biggest impression I got from the movie was the superb and beautiful cinematography of the landscapes and an imagined future.  Hammering in the gritty dank darkness of Bladerunner and the vertical living of The 5th Element the world of Total Recall was astonishing.   Well worth fans of sci-fi seeing the film just for this.  Moving onto the plot.  It was aright, same core as the last incarnation, with bits of the original short story by Dick too.  But it did lack something..sanity.  I followed the movie closely and ended up a bit confused as to where it literally was placed.  Instead of Mars and a corrupt Earth it was sad to see it come down to yet another ‘nasty imperialistic Great Britain’ attempting to enslave the ‘Colony’ (I mean really it was two and a half centuries ago, let it drop!).  The colony was accessed by a tunnel through the centre of the Earth called ‘The Drop’.  I kid you not, a ruddy tunnel through the earth from London to…where?  Australia!  This was hard to swallow, flying cars, robot soldiers, light guns, palm phones, multi-layered cities all cool.  But really, anything is easier than drilling through the core of a planet!

The story moved along at a cracking pace and it was nice to see several nods to the previous version including the larger lady with ‘two weeks’ stay and the triple breasted hooker (yes, she was there Edward!).  Aside from some glaring holes and so on (I do not want to nit pick) I enjoyed the plot.  What about the cast?

I just can’t take to Jessica Biel (who played Melina) but I thought Kate Beckinsale was really top notch as the wife Lori Quaid.  Little was made of other characters with the plot really being Doug Quaid and his not really wife Lori  trying to kil each other.  The resistance movement and its leader were a backdrop to this as was Cohaagan, the baddest guy in the older film.  I know though that you all really want me to push on and talk about Colin Farrell as Doug Quaid / Hauser.  What can I say.  He was and still is weak as a leading man.  He played the part very well but he does not shine like say Daniel Craig does as James Bond.  The film would have been better with a different leading man.  But Farrell has buried the ghost of Alexander I will give him that.

So overall its a really good science fiction B-Movie, in that it will not be remembered as a classic, but it is well worth the ticket price and I will be buying a DVD copy in the future.  Plenty of wargaming fodder in there!

Lastly a special mention to Eve Hallow who also did not want to see the film but was convinced and lured by the promise of beer and company.  He is a splendid fellow and while he did break the cinema (I kid you not, all the lights went out and the screen cut out too, that is a first for me!) I enjoyed the evening with him.  I think he plans a blog posting of his own on the movie, I will be keen on reading it once he does.

GBS

Big Man Japan (2007)

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This is not one of my normal reviews of a Japanese movie or anime.  Oh, no.  This is something far worse that I subjected myself to this weekend and kind of regretted it aside from a couple of moments of real genius in film making.  But hey, for a fifty pence download I gave it a Sunday morning go.   What I am talking about…Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Japanese mockumentary send-up of monster movies: Big Man Japan!

The Japanese are a unique people with a real passion for the creative arts but they sometimes create things which to a non Japanese (even someone like me who has studied that nation for years) comes across as utterly surreal.  Big Man Japan follows Matsumoto’s Masaru Daisato, an unassuming, sad man living in a Japanese slum.  His wife has left him, taking his daughter away, and he is despised by the people of Japan.  Why?  Because he carries on the tradition of his forefathers as a protector of the country.  Unfortunately, this involved being zapped with electricity and growing into a giant man in small shorts who fights odd monsters who attack the country.  These monsters are nothing like Godzilla and are in fact downright weird including a head atop a leg, a monster that throws eyeballs, a white and black rubber band man monster who has a comb over hair cut and many more.  The film cuts back and forth between fight scenes (highlight of the film) and Daisato and his dull as dishwater, crappy life.  The pace of the movie is all over the place and it is badly let down the by overly long and badly done ending tribute to Ultraman fight which as well as being shockingly shoddy is overly long and too violent to be funny (at least to me).  The film ends with a conversation over dinner between monsters and Big Man…well no idea there.

Below are a couple of You Tube links.  Be warned this is not for kiddies (due to its lack of sanity) but they will give you an idea of what this is about.  The first one is the trailer, the second one is one of the weirder fights with the rubber band comb over monster.

You can get the film from Amazon for a few pounds in the UK.


Lastly the moment of genius…what is it?  Well just before they blast Daisato with electricity in a Hammer Horror esq sort of way he stands inside a vast pair of underpants which he then grows into!  Only in Japan would you see that.  He might be mad and crude and weird..but he can’t be butt naked!

Watch it or don’t…but if you understand it..let me know.  🙂

GBS

Sky Blue 2142AD – Review

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I picked this DVD up on a whim some time ago and at the time the few pounds it cost me meant that I did not even look at the box too closely.  I was taken in by the beautiful stills from the animation and the basis of the plot.  What I did not notice was the fact that is not Japanese it is in fact from South Korea.  Would this make a difference, would it make the film less appealing due to a different set of cultural values and norms compared to those of the more familiar Japanese?  Well to find out I had to watch it so in the early hours of Monday morning I did just that!

First off watch this trailer on YouTube.  This is one of the most visually awesome movies I have ever seen and I did stop the film several times to spool back to re-watch sequences just to see the superb backdrops.  I learned that Sky Blue (called Wonderful Days upon its initial release) took seven years to make and it shows.  A very high level of detail and what I can see was at times painstaking animation gives this film a hyper real look at times.  So overall it is well worth watching from an aesthetic point of view alone.  The Korean impact on animation across the world is massive (animating most programmes including The Simpsons) and it makes sense for them to want to move out of Japan’s shadow and establish a reputation for their own work.  Technically they have done this with Sky Blue; but only for the animation.  Why?  Because the plot is turgid.

Set in the year 2140, the familiar tale follows life in the city of Ecoban, a technological haven on an ecologically ravaged Earth. Humanity has been divided into the rich elite, who live inside Ecoban, and the refugees, who are forced to scrape a living outside. It’s a balance that the elite are happy to continue, especially since Ecoban’s ability to convert pollution into energy gives them a vested interest in doing nothing about the state of the planet outside.  Events finally reach a crisis point when a mysterious figure breaks in to Ecoban and tries to obtain information from the city-controlling Delos system. For city guardian Jay, the stranger is a face from her past that causes her to question her loyalty to Ecoban. The childhood friend she had thought banished forever, Shua is also the grandson of Dr Noah, the genius responsible for Ecoban’s creation. Now he is out to try and fulfil Ecoban’s true purpose, and maybe exchange the permanent clouds of pollution for blue skies. 

That is the plot and it is a stock cyber dominated post-apoco world with clichéd Japanese ports such as the sexy doe eyed heroine and the stylised hero with the hidden past adding nothing to any of them.  It is a shame actually as with a little more thought and perhaps a British or American writer they could have had a plot to match the visuals.  It is not a bad plot but it belongs to the 1980’s it is so staid in comparison to current anime.  I will also mention the dubbed English version which is poor and not well matched to the dialogue.  Better to watch it with sub-titles.

So Sky Blue 2142AD is worth watching, worth a few pounds to own but not worth the four to five times that which anime stores want for a copy.  In wargaming terms Ecoban provides a nice if not novel setting for 15mm or 28mm science fiction skirmish.  Pick it up from the budget bucket.

GBS

The Amazing Spiderman 2012 – Review

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No billboard outside so this poster in the cinema had to suffice!

My good lady and myself decided to take a trip to the cinema in Kilmarnock a couple of nights ago and since we did not plan it ahead we choose the film to watch upon arrival.  After ruling out all of the children’s films (the gods know that I will have to watch these endlessly should the little one’s get a taste for any of them!) that left just TWO choices in a cinema with a dozen screens!  So given the choice of two different superheroes I chose  The Amazing Spiderman over Batman.  After handing over what I think is quite a lot of money for two tickets in I went!

To be honest I was not keen on either film.  Batman did not appeal as I think (and seem to be alone in this) that Bale makes a poor Dark Knight and his constant growling tone voice gets on my nerves plus aside from the Joker in the last film it is very dark and miserable.  On the other hand did I want to watch the origin story of Spiderman yet again either….

Well I enjoyed Spiderman it was a very well cast and shot movie much better than the last version of the origin story from the last decade.  Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben was superb and Andrew Garfield nailed the tall and geeky Peter Parker nailed the character.  As normal Spiderman as a hero seems unable to deal with anything more than a petty cut purse and in the movie The Lizard had to defeat itself by a crisis of concious while all the time being splatted by endless globs of web spray from the wall crawler. Special mention to Denis Leary who played the police captain with just a hint of his usual intense and crazy self; great!

Overall if you do not want to see the origin of Spiderman again avoid this until DVD, but if you do and you love the character go right ahead to the cinema.  It had soul and a few laughs too.

GBS

A look at Miniature Wargames magazine No 352

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I got my advertisers copy of this months new Miniature Wargames magazine in the mail on Monday so I have it fairly close to those who line up at WHSmith newsagents at the weekend.  Now that the carnage of the The Thinker’s tenth birthday is over I can do a wee look at this issue.  So without further ado….

Miniature Wargames No 352

Cupola: Andrew Hubback does his editorial commentary as normal and this time he announces or hints at a refreshed design for the layout of MW coming next issue.  I look forward to seeing the rests of his feedback from the readers.  Feedback is vital in all industries and I often feel as if I operate in silence because if the customers who buy my titles and miniatures do not tell me what they think of them or what they would like to see it is really tough to improve!

Letters Page:  Good letters in this month especially one from John Treadaway (ah..fond memories of Full Thrust!) concerning the lack of non-historical materials in the magazine (not just MW but focused on it).  While this can mean Fantasy and Science Fiction it also means ‘what if’ scenarios from history too.  This is an important point to take up.  MW own survey last issue showed how much non-historical gaming there was at Salute 2012 and I commented then about its importance to the future of the industry especially among younger wargamers.

Boxing Clever at Fisticuffs:  Nigel Pell and Gary Mitchell report from the Fisticuffs show in Weymouth (south coast of England).  A good read this and its always good to hear of the joy and suffering that wargamers go through getting to shows.  I have not been to Fisticuffs (it would be a thousand mile round trip from Girvan!) but it looked like a fine event with a lot going on including a large game of GrUnTz put on by the Wessex Wyverns local club plus of course Gary’s own excellent Space Vixens from Mars was there; love that range!

The Attack on Raedykes Camp:  The third article in the series by Peter Hall on re-fighting Mons Graupius with the Hail Caesar wargame rules.  This time a Roman Marching Camp hobby article and run through of two games centred around it.  I studied this campaign at university and Peter does an excellent job in turning it to wargaming.

Apocalypse Vow:  It is going to be the end of the world on December 21st this year if you believe the long vanished Mayans.  This article by Gary Mitchell looks the this prediction along with Mayan warfare and ways to use it on the tabletop.  As to the end of the world…no way…I still got rules to write!

The Osaka Campaign:  Part two, and sadly the final, of Kevin Jones look at the rise of the Tokugawa family and the Japanese feudal wars.  One of my favourite nations and a period I know a lot about and in fact I own almost of the books the author quotes as sources.  An excellent summary with some wargaming notes and ideas too.

Scuffle at Shevardino:  Napoleon’s 1812 campaign and the smaller battle that came just before Borodino written by Chris Hahn.  This is a fine article with a lot of history, maps and wargaming material in it but it did not grab me much.  Perhaps I am not in a mood for Napoleonics just now (I am busy with my preparations for a ‘Martian’  terrain set for 28mm scale but that is another matter) so I read it and passed on.

15mm.co.uk’s advert for Renaissance miniatures..gosh it almost looks like a professional did it!

Don’t Forget Your Tomahawk:  I always look forward to Steve Eardley’s pages in MW because he ranges wide and far for material and always delivers a good read.  This time its an approach to wargaming the French and Indian War (or the Seven Years War if you come from the civilised side of the pond!) followed by a delve into the miniatures that can be had for the conflict.  Four excellent pages!

Wargaming Gettyburg Part Two:  Jon Sutherland offers up the second part of his series on wargaming the biggest battle of the American Civil War.  It is a well delivered and sharp article which is just as well as I am fairly tired of ACW as a period and of that battle in particular.  Good for fans of the period.

France 1940:  World War Two booty for fans of the most recent worldwide conflict.   Mark Freeth presents a report on a battle that recently took place at his Wargames Holiday Centre.  It reads like a plug for the place but hey its a good plug and I for one would love a weekend of Mark’s hospitality!

A Spreading Insurgency:  Mike Haran presents a system for wargaming the action when the recent Arab Spring turns to a cold, cold Arab Winter of war and terrorism.  For me this near future article is the best one in this issue. Presenting a squared grid of the Middle East and surrounding regions along with outcomes allows for massive variety and unknowns in play.  Added to this is a system of unit deployment, spies, situations.  Excellent all around and could be adapted to a sci-fi setting with ease.

Darker Horizons: This time headed up ‘Redundancy’ Gary Mitchell begins my favourite part of the magazine by outlining his potential woes of facing the loss of his teaching post and having to do the ‘trolley shuffle’ so loved by the middle aged all across Britain’s thousands of supermarkets.  I wish him luck and while its not the purpose of this posting or this blog to get political it does make you wonder if teaching children is about experience or being cheap…ah but lets carry on.  Gary crams and I mean crams information into the pages listing all the current happenings of two dozen companies and fifty or more releases.  Black Cat Bases get a feature of their new ‘between scales’ Grey Aliens and Sheep while some other person gets a mention about his ‘amazing sci-fant empire.  I wonder where he finds the time?’…what can I say, not much sleep, fast typing, a strong work ethic and a loving wife.

MOTH and Me get a mention! 

Book Reviews: A collection of reviewers look at Twilight of the Hellanistic World (Pen & Sword), The Fall of English France (Osprey), Austrian Seven Years War Cavalry and Artillery (Ken Trotman Publishing), Napoleons Swiss Troops (Osprey), Forts of the War of 1812 (Osprey), The Eastern Front 1914-20 (Amber Books) and a biography of Georgy Zhukov (Osprey).  Good reviews but all I can say is thank heaven for Osprey eh, otherwise what would the review pages do!  I often think that a wargames magazine should review wargame rules as well as military history books in its pages; after all it is aimed at the wargaming hobby.

All in all a good read and recommended for those of you who can get it.   But then I would say that…I am in it!

GBS

John Carter of Mars – Review

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I was surprised yesterday when my good lady presented me with a copy of John Carter which has just been released on DVD.  I had said I wanted to see the film but as normal did not make it to the cinema and then forgot about it until this month when the release was made.  It was like she read my mind!  So we sat down last night to watch it and while I normally have to be prodded to stay awake by ten in the evening this was not the case with this film.

John Carter is based on the book Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs which I read many years ago and had mostly forgotten but some details did come back to me in the watching.  Carter is a cavalry officer after the American Civil War who loses his wife and daughter and takes to seeking out gold in the caves of Arizona.  Gold he finds and also the means to travel in an instant to ‘Barsoom’ or Mars to us Terrans.    As normal I do not want to spoil the plot so I will stick to the main areas of the film.  Firstly it is brilliantly rendered and shot with top notch special effects and traditional film making combined, much as you would expect from Disney Studios, and the actors are all well suited to their roles.  The historical scenes on Earth are accurate and skill full holding the plot well.  The scenes on Mars are astonishing in places with vast moving cities and creatures as well as airships and a ‘death ray’ too.  The film is fast paced and held my attention from the first to the last moment with good use of action, tension and drama as well as a love story and woven strands of a father daughter narrative too.

This film has lost Disney a lot of money on this movie and it has had some really bad reviews but ignore that.  I loved this film and as society keeps pointing out to me the kind of turgid crud that ‘people’ like and give good reviews to bores the hell out of me and things I like get slated and bomb at the box office.  Draw what you want from that statement but if you are a fan of science fiction and of strong alpha male leads in movies (remember those?) combined with beautiful and independent female leads then you will love this.  Some say the plot is a mess…I saw no evidence of this; it made perfect sense to me. John Carter is an excellent family adventure movie that really did remind me of the thrill of the original Star Wars movies.  A film with a fixed point of vision and not made on a ‘tick the boxes plot’ hollywood normally churns out since the early 1990’s.  Perhaps that is why it failed…

As for wargaming potential this film is stuffed with it; a gamers dream really.  Many set pieces, lots of aliens and monsters as well as historical weapons and troops.  Might well become my Mars project at this rate since learning of the new Total Recall.

Watch This Movie!

GBS

Rob Alderman has a video look at HOF Fire-Team

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Congrats to Rob Alderman, talented painter and miniature sculpter and all around good guy, for posting up a video review of HOF Fire-Team on his Voodoo Orc channel on You Tube.  He read a posting by the rules author of the game Bob Minadeo in which Bob pointed out that despite being playtested and bought by hundreds of 15mm sci-fi wargamers he had yet to see any review of the rules.  Well I like to read independent reviews (or watch them as in this case) and also had through it odd that there were no reviews of HOFFT while USE ME has had at least a dozen I know of.

Rob says he will be doing more posts about the game and perhaps even a couple of live play through examples too. Plus possible hobby articles like my own ones on TTWG blog about HOFFT tiles and scenics.  I look forward to this!

I have known Rob for about five years now and he always impresses me as a designer and as a person.  Keep up the good work lad!

Oh, and congratulations also to Harlequin Han on getting a 1st in her Fine Art degree…she is too good for the likes of you now Rob 🙂

GBS